Community Outreach and Partnerships in Service-Learning Mission
Rationale for the COPSL
What is Service-Learning?
Elements of a Successful S-L Class
History of COPSL
Rationale
Community Outreach and Partnerships in Service-Learning provides assistance connecting community engagement with course-based learning. COPSL coordinates service-learning for the Bloomington campus in cooperation with school-based and co-curricular initiatives, such as the Civic Leadership Development program, the Leadership, Ethics and Social Action minor, the community service efforts of the Volunteer Students Bureau in the Student Activities Office and the Residence Halls Association.
COPSL is dedicated to fostering community partnerships in service and learning because they contribute to all aspects of the university’s mission:
- As a pedagogical method, service-learning furthers students’ critical thinking, improves their mastery of academic material, and demonstrates the relationship between theory and practice.
- It also strengthens students’ sense of social and ethical responsibility, deepens their understanding of the context of social issues, and encourages them to participate in the community beyond campus.
- Service-learning also can make faculty and student research more rigorous, as well as more responsive to public concerns.
- Finally, service-learning reinvigorates the university’s commitment to using its resources for the public good.
What is Service-Learning?
Service-learning courses exist in a variety of disciplines. A writing course requires that students write a newsletter or brochure for a community agency and gain an appreciation of writing for an external audience as they strengthen writing skills; a Spanish course provides students the opportunity to serve as translators at the hospital or tutor at a local middle school as a way to practice conversation skills and understand the value of cultural diversity; groups of business students volunteer at a community service agency and assist in advertising, long-range planning, and data analysis to gain an understanding of how skills developed for the private sector can also meet community needs.
The service component can be required for all students enrolled in the course, or it can be designed as an option for students to select in lieu of other coursework. Instructional support for the logistics of placing students and facilitating reflection activities might be offered by an ACE or an experienced student who works with the faculty member in an independent study, from Honors students who have had the course or worked with the instructor and receive a teaching assistantship from the Honors Division, or graduate students seeking experience in service-learning pedagogy and theory.
Elements of a Successful S-L Class
- Service is clearly connected to the academic component via readings, discussions, speakers, etc. (Typically, students don’t get credit for the community service; they get credit for the learning.)
- A reciprocal relationship between the university and the community makes each a partner in the education of students. (Knowledge gained in community-based organizations complements classroom knowledge.)
- Service meets a genuine community need as defined by the community-based organization. (Community agencies are too busy to “make work” for our students, and students can become discouraged when they perceive that their service isn’t meeting a need.)
- Structured time for reflection is included in course requirements. (Everyone has experience, but not everyone learns from it. Consider service a text to be analyzed in class.)
- The philanthropic and civic context of the students’ service is discussed and examined. An emphasis on civic work distinguishes service-learning from practica or internships, which focus more on professional preparation.
History of COPSL
In the mid 1990s the number of service-learning classes taught at IU Bloomington grew to such a number that an office dedicated to centralizing, organizing, and coordinating service-learning efforts became necessary. COPSL was established in August 1998, when Vice President Gros Louis saw an opportunity to institutionalize what had been a grassroots movement. The effective partnerships among COPSL, faculty, and community that now exist are the result of a decade of effort by a number of people from the university and the community.
